Here's what an Apple executive will tell Congress tomorrow

Although the spat between the government and Apple over an
encrypted iPhone in San Bernardino, California may be
over for now, the real fight will begin when Congress
seriously considers a bill that could place restrictions on
strong encryption technologies.

Thank you, Chairman Murphy, Ranking Member DeGette and members of
the Subcommittee.

It's my pleasure to appear before you today on behalf of Apple.
We appreciate your invitation and the opportunity to be part
of this important discussion about encryption.

Hundreds of millions of people trust Apple’s products with the
most intimate details of their daily lives. Some of you
might have a smartphone in your pocket right now, and if you
think about it, there’s probably more information stored on
that phone than a thief could steal by breaking into your
house.

And it's not just a phone. It’s a photo album. It’s a wallet.
It’s how you communicate with your doctor, your partner, and
your kids. It’s also the central command center for your car or
your home. Many people also use their smartphone to
authenticate and gain access to other networks, businesses,
financial systems and critical infrastructure. And we feel a
great sense of responsibility to protect that information
and access.

For all of these reasons, our digital devices, indeed our entire
digital lives, are increasingly and persistently under siege
from attackers. And their attacks grow more sophisticated every
day. This quest for access fuels a multi-billion dollar
covert world of thieves, hackers, and crooks. We are all
aware of some of the recent large-scale attacks — hundreds of
thousands of social security numbers were stolen from the
IRS, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management said as many as
21 million people had their records compromised and as many as 78
million people were affected by an attack on Anthem’s health
insurance records.

The best way we, and the technology industry, know how to protect
your information is through the use of strong encryption.
Strong encryption is a good thing, a necessary thing. And the
government agrees. Encryption today is the backbone of our
cybersecurity infrastructure and provides the very best
defense we have against increasingly hostile attacks.

The United States has spent tens of millions of dollars through
the Open Technology Fund and other programs to fund strong
encryption. And the Administration’s Review Group
on Intelligence and Communications Technology urged the U.S.
government to fully support and not in any way subvert,
undermine, or weaken generally available commercial
encryption software.

At Apple, with every new release of hardware and software, we
advance the safety, security and data protection features in
our products. We work hard to assist law enforcement
because we share their goal of creating a safer world. I
manage a team of dedicated professionals that are on call 24
hours a day, 365 days a year. Not a day goes by where someone on
my team is not working with law enforcement. We know from
our interactions with law enforcement officials that the
information we are providing is extremely useful in helping to
prevent and
solve crimes.

Keep in mind that the people subject to law enforcement inquiries
represent far less than one tenth of one percent of our
hundreds of millions of users. But all of those users — 100% of
our users would be made more vulnerable if we were forced to
build a back door.

As you heard from our colleagues in law enforcement, they have
the perception that encryption walls off information to
them. But technologists and national security experts
don’t see the world that way. We see a data-rich world that
seems to be full of information. Information that law
enforcement can use to solve -- and prevent -- crimes.

This is the difference in perspective that we should be focused
on resolving. To suggest that the American people must
choose between privacy and security is to present a false choice.

The issue is not about privacy at the expense of security. It is
about maximizing safety and security. We feel strongly
that Americans will be better off if we can offer the very best
protections for
their digital lives.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to answering your
questions.

Sewell will be joined by other witnesses including Matthew Blaze,
a computer science professor at the University of Pennsylvania,
police chief Thomas Galati, who heads up the New York
Police Department's intelligence bureau, and Amy Hess, an
assistant director at the FBI, as well as other law enforcement
officials.